Born to Buy : The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture

We did a search for other books with a similar title,
however there were no matches. You can try selecting from a similar category, click on the author's name, or use the search box above to find your book.

Over the last fifteen years children's spending power has mushroomed to an estimated30 billion in direct purchases and another600 billion of influence over parental purchases. Advertising and marketing has exploded alongside expenditures and now totals more than12 billion a year. Ads targeted at children are virtually everywhere - in schools, museums and on the internet - and strategies for capturing the child wallet have become ever more sophisticated. Marketers are intruding into a child's most private space, organizing stealthy peer-to-peer viral marketing efforts, and using high tech scientific research methodologies. Together, these trends have led to a pervasive commercialisation of childhood in the West. By eighteen months babies can recognize logos, by two they ask for products by brand name. During their nursery school years children will request an average of twenty-five products a day, by the time they enter primary school the average child can identify 200 logos and children between the ages of six and twelve spend more time shopping than reading, attending youth groups, playing outdoors or spending time in household conversation. On the basis of first-hand research inside the advertising industry, BORN TO BUY lays bare the research, messages and marketing strategies being used to target children, and assesses the impact of those efforts.

Arlie Russell Hochschildauthor of "The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work" and "The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work"This brilliant, informative, and deeply important book tells us what the advertisers don't -- the more advertising children see and hear, the more likely they are to be depressed and anxious and to suffer family conflict. The American dream isn't something we buy, Schor wisely tells us; it's something we make and can, if broken, repair. A book that will start a revolution...

Tables and Figures

p. ix

Author's Note

p. 1

Acknowledgments

p. 5

Introduction

p. 9

The Changing World of Children's Consumption

p. 19

From Tony the Tiger to Slime Time Live: The Content of Commercial Messages

p. 39

The Virus Unleashed: Ads Infiltrate Everyday Life

p. 69

Captive Audiences: The Commercialization of Public Schools

p. 85

Dissecting the Child Consumer: The New Instrusive Research

p. 99

Habit Formation: Selling Kids on Junk Food, Drugs, and Violence

p. 119

How Consumer Culture Undermines Children's Well-Being

p. 141

Empowered or Seduced? The Debate About Advertising and Marketing to Kids